


Child Jack to the Ice Tower Came

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 20 Short Gen Fics [5]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 11:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17980106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "(sorry if this is a repeat, something weird happened the first time I tried to post this.)Jack Frost, for all that he is ice cold, is the embodiment of fun. His winter is days off, slapstick, snowball fights. This is fine.But General Winter, on the other hand, is the embodiment of the harsh elements. His winter is ribs-thin, suffocating snow, sharp ice.Option A here is the fluffy, worldbuilding one: the Guardians meet General Winter, or maybe he’s an acquaintance of North’s.Option B is the terrifying, plotty one: Pitch and General Winter team up. After all, what better match for darkness than cold?(If I sound nuts, enlighten yourselves! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Winter)"AU in which General Winter is a real person everyone knows about and fears. Jack accidentally freezes his village’s well one summer day and he’s sent away to the General, because he knows how to control winter, right?





	Child Jack to the Ice Tower Came

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr 7/2/2014.

After he’d somehow coated the public well in a thin layer of glittering frost on a day when the air above the fields around the village shimmered with heat, everything had seemed to happen in no more time than it took to blink.   
  
But he’d blinked many times. And every time he opened his eyes, his hands had been before him. Pale. A few small scars on the fingers. Short nails that weren’t excessively clean. So ordinary. And so terrifying now. If he wasn’t the owner of these hands, he’d no doubt be speaking in none-to-quiet whispers about them now, too.  
  
At the village meeting, he hadn’t been able to answer the headman when he asked him how he’d made the ice. It was an honest answer. And the villagers had been honest with the decision they made after he’d answered.  
  
 _You will go to the General’s Tower._  
  
He didn’t try to fight back. He didn’t try to run away and find somewhere he could be a stranger, even when the tower loomed ahead. There was something wintery about him, and he couldn’t risk knowing nothing about it. And General Winter was the only man who might be able to teach him something about controlling winter—that is, if he was a man at all. Staring up at the tower, Jack thought it all too likely that he was something else entirely.  
  
Once, the General’s Tower had been a stern, unglamorous pile of granite. Now, most of the stone had crumbled away, to be replaced by eerie excrescences of ice, sharp and white and forbidding, even in the height of summer.  
  
Jack pulled his cloak around himself as he drew near the door. It didn’t do much to protect him from the sucking chill of the tower, but it helped him believe that somewhere in the world that existed far out of sight of impossible towers of ice, some love for him remained.  
  
(“He doesn’t need that!” someone—Jack had forced himself to not recognize the voice—had shouted as his parents had pressed the cloak into his hands. “He won’t even need it in winter!”  
  
“Then he’ll be wise enough to give it to someone who does!” His father had shouted back.)  
  
He wondered if General Winter had left behind a family.  
  
The door swung open before he could knock. Inside, the tower was dim, but not dark, with the summer sunlight pushing weakly thought the ice.  
  
As soon as he was clear of it, it slammed behind him.  
  
“So,” a voice like the creaking of river ice said, “you opened the door. More’s the pity, boy.”  
  
In the milky light of the tower, the speaker was difficult to see clearly. Jack could tell he was very thin, and he stood straight and tall despite his long white beard. He wore a tattered military coat too large for his frame, and though Jack hadn’t seen many soldiers, he thought the coat seemed out of place somehow.  
  
General Winter stepped forward, medals on the uniform clacking together. As he got closer, Jack could see that most of the medals weren’t really medals. They were spoons, buttons, belt buckles, pieces of broken jewelry. Despite there being so many of them on the uniform, they couldn’t conceal the ragged, brownish hole over the left breast. “I know what you’re thinking,” General Winter said, smiling without humor. “That coat’s too new for an immortal. Well,” he continued, “I’ll have you know, I got it last winter. Plenty of new medals then, too.”  
  
Jack shuddered. “Do you really…” He couldn’t finish the question.  
  
“Really? I really do a lot of things. I call the ice that kills the invaders, and when there are no invaders, I call the ice then, too. A General’s got to have a war, boy. Summer’s as good an enemy as any.”  
  
Jack looked at him in horror. “I was sent here because I can make ice, too,” he whispered.   
  
“Well, good thing you don’t have to be General Winter,” he said. “You clearly don’t have the constitution for it.”  
  
“I…I need to learn how to control it.”  
  
General Winter stared at him. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Jack.”  
  
“Jack. Be Jack Frost then, ice-making boy.” General Winter shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat. “And when you do learn how to control the ice inside you…come back and tell me.” He turned away, and the door swung open, just far enough to let Jack slip out, just far enough that no ray of sunshine fell on the General.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> marypsue said: Oh that is just positively mean.


End file.
